Lately I suddenly thought of my own demise, after being sicker than I normally have ever been, and reacted with a sort of terrible anticipation. I am afraid . . .
So, this makes me ask, why are humans, assuming it isn’t just me, afraid of death? I doubt animals fully understand it since they are without reasoning ability, although of course I think they understand it in the practical sense of someone no longer functioning, but not in the sense of it making them, for example, pass a collection plate around.
So what is the scoop on this fear of death thing; it seems cosmically cruel that we have the reason to imagine our demise, but little to do about it for now, and nothing to do about in the end. I don’t like this very much, and the dominant explanations for death, such as the certain monotheistic religions wherein much of America believes, have a bible so full of contradictions and holes that the book is obviously the product of mortal men. Therefore, the bible that says to stone pretty much everybody cannot be easily trusted by my conscience to be the last word on the afterlife.
Well, because it sucks to die. When you die that’s it, game over. All the cool books and things will come out and you’ll never get to read them or do them. That, you know, sucks.
Even animal fears death to a certain degree. I think as you go up on the intelligence scale, that fear becomes more real. Humans are self aware, and aware of their mortality, and are able to think in terms of the future more than most other animals (all other animals really), and so we fear death more. But I think that a fear of death is pretty much ingrained in all the higher organisms…after all, if you (‘you’ being an entire species) didn’t fear death then you might not live long enough to breed, and then whatever species you were part of would probably not be around very long.
They do to the extent they are able to. What most animals lack is a sense of self, and the ability to project into the future. They mostly live day to day. But, if you are a cow suddenly confronted by a wolf, you are not going to be a happy cow…you are going to be a very afraid cow. Why? Well, because you would equate ‘wolf’ with ‘being eaten’, i.e. with death. And that would make you a very unhappy cow.
What do we do about it? We deal with it. That goes along with the territory of being able to contemplate our individual deaths. Mostly, we don’t focus on it any more than that cow does until the wolf comes along (as your own illness demonstrates). It’s not something I, personally, dwell on in general. And when it happens to someone we know, we deal with it. How we deal with it depends on each of us individually. Humans have constructed a huge number of ways to deal with it (that’s really what religion was and is all about, boiled down)…which one works best for you will depend on your own mindset. Personally, I take the path of not dwelling on it, while holding out the hope that magic pony tech will come along and increase my life span long enough so that in the end (when I’m several thousands of years old), death might actually be welcome. Or, hopefully I’ll die in bed suddenly while doing all the things I’m not going to tell you I like to do…
I am an atheist. No god or gods, no afterlife, no pre-life. There is only the self aware time I have in this body that facilitates my existence. When this body dies, I cease to exist. No more toofs. I will not continue in another place or form.
That is why I fear death. This is all I have. A belief in an afterlife would sure make things comforting, knowing I get uploaded to somewhere else.
But even religious people fear death. Heck, even those who believe in reincarnation fear death, I’m sure.
I think the one thing that most people, no matter what their religion, think about death is that it certainly ends your life as you know it. No religion or philosophy that I know of allows you to come back after death and resume your life as yourself the way you were before. If you like your life at all, that’s a sobering thought.
I believe it is the unknown that people fear, and the pain that may cause death. Religious people fear death because of the teachings of hell. But there are those who have no fear of death. Those who have already experienced it.
Erm… for the vast stretches of time that evolution was doing its thang, there wouldn’t have been a second spared pondering anything’s demise, because until the arrival of self-consciousness, everything occurred by accident or instinct/programming.
So, you’re totally wrong, sorta thing.
As for our fear of death, when all we have ever known is existing, the idea of not-existing can be a little daunting to those who don’t want to consider that there is no place in the scheme of things for each and every individual.
ps. Sorry to piss in your Cheerios, Todderbob. Nothing personal.
We can’t conceptualize our own eternal absence. The inability to conceptualize an event that must certainly befall us defaults to fear of that event.
What we can do about this fear is to understand that it is an inevitable construct of our intellect. There is nothing wrong with raging against the dying of the light, but we should try to understand that not existing is not as fearful as it seems.
I don’t fear death. I *fear *the ***pain ***that goes with a lot of ways of dying, but I also fear non-lethal pain the same way. I *regret *not getting to do a lot of things that I would want to do, in one lifetime (so, in a way, *dislike *death because it thwarts my desires.) But the thought that in 30 or 50 or however many years, I will die, doesn’t particularly move me with fear. Given the chance, I’d rather be immortal, but I’m not, so fear is not a good response to my mortality.
What makes you think that the human fear of death isn’t instinct/programming?
Conscious thought is just another ability the humans have. And as it affects human behaviour, it becomes relevant in evolution. After all, Humans who try to survive are better at surviving, and so better at getting their genes all over the place.
Fear of death is a very good motivation to stay alive. What we call fear of death might just be the subroutine of our brain telling us to keep going. It’s not like there was at some time a human who suddenly was able to think, and at some point he sat down, thought, and went something like “:eek:! I can die! Oh No! Better try and survive!”. That function has always been there as long our predecessors have been breathing.
If that’s what it is, can you explain how some people overcome that programming for self/species-preservation? Nah, I wont keep you guessing; it’s that slightly ethereal thing called “the will”.
So, what were we doing with “conscious thought” prior to recorded history? It wasn’t that long ago in homo sapiens history that we were still worshipping the sun, and making sacrifices to nature gods.
It can also paralyse creatures into merely accepting their place in the food chain.
I think the point is that there’s an evolutionary advantage associated with attributes that tend to prolong an entity’s life and thereby expand it’s chances of procreating, that in turn making that attribute more common, etc. A fear of death seems to be such an attribute (though certainly not the only one)–i.e., the sort of thing that helps to keep you alive. It’s not about philosophizing per se.
Humans who fear death have an evolutionary advantage over those who do not and consequently, we predominate. From an evolutionary perspective, the OP might as well have asked, “Why are humans on the whole strongly inclined not to jump off high cliffs?” Because such an inclination tends to thin out the herd, and a different, more-self-preserving instinct or inclination doesn’t.
For those species where that occurs, if that place in the food chain is an evolutionary advantage, then good for them. If not, things will take care of themselves.
